Ларс Кеплер - Stalker

‘Because you received treatment for mental illness twenty years ago.’

‘That was a difficult time for me, before I listened to God.’

He falls silent and looks warmly at Ingrid, who’s just come back in. She’s standing in the doorway with a red Filofax in her hand.

Margot takes the book, puts on her reading glasses and starts leafing through the dates.

‘Do you have a video camera?’ Adam asks as Margot skims through the diary.

‘Yes,’ he replies, with a quizzical look at Adam.

‘Can I take a look at it?’

Thomas’s Adam’s apple bobs above the knot of his tie.

‘What for?’ he asks.

‘Just routine,’ Adam replies.

‘OK, but it’s being repaired.’ Thomas smiles, stretching his crooked mouth.

‘Where?’

‘A friend’s mending it for me,’ he says softly.

‘Can I have the name of the friend, please?’

‘Of course,’ Thomas murmurs and Adam’s phone rings inside his jacket.

‘Excuse me,’ he says, standing up and looking for his mobile as he turns his back on Thomas.

Through the window at the back he sees a neighbour standing on the other side of the fence looking at them. In the reflection he can also see himself, his thick hair and heavy eyebrows. He finds his phone: Adde, an IT technician with National Crime, who also happens to live in Hökmossen.

‘Adam,’ he says as he answers.

‘Another film,’ Adde practically screams.

‘We’ll be there as soon as—’

‘It’s your wife on the video, it’s Katryna—’

Adam doesn’t hear anything after that, he walks straight into the hall, leans against the wall and manages to pull down a framed photograph of two smiling girls.

‘Adam?’ Margot calls. ‘What’s going on?’

She leaves the book on the sofa, stands up and accidentally knocks over a glass of lemonade on the low table.

Adam has already reached the front door. Margot can’t see his face. She feels sick, clutches her stomach and follows him out.

Adam runs down the path to the car.

He’s started the engine before she’s even out of the door. She stops, panting for breath, and watches him rev the engine, perform a sharp U-turn in the road, skid and drive into a hockey-goal that some children have erected on the side of the road. She walks down to the road and is gesturing for him to stop when her phone rings.

The house at Bultvägen 5 only has three rooms, but the kitchen has a nice dining area and there’s a basement, and a small garden that backs on to a patch of forest. They bought it fairly cheaply and were able to move closer to the city, but the house won’t make it through many more winters without some serious renovation work.

Katryna Youssef is sitting on the white sofa in front of the television. She’s wearing her soft blue Hollister sweatpants and a pink T-shirt.

She knows the varnish on her new nails dried a long while ago, but she still spreads her fingers out as she reaches for her glass of wine. Seeing as Adam isn’t home, she’s taken the opportunity to do her nails. Otherwise he goes out and sits in the car to avoid getting a headache.

She takes a sip, then looks down at the iPad in her lap. Caroline hasn’t updated her status yet. She hasn’t said anything for an hour now, and she can’t have been in the shower all that time, surely?

Katryna is watching an old film called Face/Off on television, but is finding it rather far-fetched.

She’s got to work tomorrow, so shouldn’t really sit up and wait for Adam.

I’m not going to either, she thinks, and glances at the window as a bush in the garden brushes hard against the glass.

She slips her hand inside her loose sweatpants and starts to masturbate, shuts her eyes for a few seconds, then stares out at the garden through the window, still masturbating, but stops when it occurs to her that their neighbour might bring back the rake he borrowed earlier that evening. She can’t be bothered to close the curtains, and anyway, she’s more bored than horny.

Katryna yawns and scratches her ankle. Even though she ate a tuna salad earlier she’s hungry again. She carries on looking at the iPad, scrolls back and reads her own comments, then writes another one.

With peculiar persistence she looks at the latest pictures of Caroline Winberg, the woman she’s practically stalking.

Caroline was discovered on an underground train on her way to football practice, and is now a supermodel. It’s rumoured that she won’t get out of bed for less that 25,000 dollars.

Katryna follows her on all the forums there are, and always knows where she is and what she’s doing.

It’s just turned out that way.

She reaches for the glass of wine again and shivers when she realises that the garden lights aren’t working. The bushes look black against the glass. She’s not sure if the lights have worked at all that evening. It’s not the first time they’ve gone wrong. Adam will have to check the fuse-box. There’s no way she’s going down into the cellar. Not after the break-in.

She sees her own reflection in the dark window, drinks some more wine and looks at her nails.

Someone broke in last Thursday when she and Adam were both at work, and now the lock on the cellar door is broken. They’ve tied a piece of rope around it so it feels locked if you pull it. Nothing of value was stolen, not the home cinema centre, the stereo or games console.

Maybe they realised that Adam is in the police and changed their minds? It’s possible that they saw his framed diploma from the Police Academy and got out as fast as they could.

Adam thinks it was just some bored youngsters.

But it’s still a bit odd, Katryna thinks. They could have taken their whisky and wine, or her jewellery. The Prada clutch-bag that Adam gave her two years ago was lying out in the bedroom.

She’s only discovered one missing object. A little cloth embroidered by her grandmother. Adam doesn’t believe her, he reckons it will turn up, and refused to mention it in the police report.

Lamassu, the protective deity that her grandmother embroidered in pale red thread on white fabric, has always sat on the bookcase next to the silver crucifix on a stand.

Katryna knows someone has taken it.

When she was little she didn’t like the embroidery at all. Her mum said that Lamassu watched over their home, but she could only see a monster. The close-stitched cloth depicted a man with a plaited beard, with the body of a bull and enormous angel’s wings arching out from his back.

Once again she thinks of the rope that Adam wound round the handle of the cellar door and then tied to the water pipe leading to the washing machine. She’s made him look through the house several times.

Apart from the cellar, the part of the house she finds creepiest is the large cleaning cupboard between the living room and the kitchen.

It’s like a dressing room, with two unusually thick wooden doors. It used to be locked from the outside with a revolving wooden catch, but that’s come loose. Now she and Adam just push the doors shut, but they move, rubbing against each other and opening slightly, as if someone’s trying to peer out.

A car’s headlights reflect off the gilded icon on the bedroom wall, then the glass covering Adam’s framed match jersey.

Every home has its creepy corners, she thinks with a shudder. Rooms and corners that have stored up childhood fears of the dark over the ages.

She drinks the last of the wine and gets up to go to the kitchen.

Katryna moves the wine-box to the edge of the worktop, then fills her glass under the little tap, splashing some tiny red droplets on her hand.

The wind is rattling the kitchen air vent. Through the glass door she can see the empty street through the branches of the viburnum.